Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

Willow crouched, picked up a fist-sized stone, and flung it at the nearest silver eye, shouting insults. The crack widened and more of the slavering, icy head emerged, straining after her. Just as the carapace above the eyes cleared the opening, the dwarf girl turned and ran.

It was sixty feet from one side of the gate to the other, and Willow covered the distance on flying feet. She reached the far side, ducked through the opening there, and ran back along the screw’s length. All of the gatekeepers had disappeared, but she had seen how the gate worked. Reaching the iron column with its double levers, she dodged a flailing tail, threw her weight onto the vertical lever, and hauled it down. Valves shifted, waters flowed, and the screw reversed its rotation. The great plug began to close again.

Instantly, fogs rolled backward as the fog-creature realized the trap and began to withdraw. “Hurry, you be-rusted contraption!” Willow shouted at the screw. “Can’t you turn any faster?” With all her might, she hauled the lever down to full horizontal position. The sound of waters increased, the screw turned faster, and the creature hissed and roared in frenzied fury.

It threw itself this way and that, battering gatehouse walls, sockets, and turning screw. Great talons scrabbled against stone, digging deep gouges in the floor of the tunnel. Stubby, webbed wings beat the air, stirring the increasing cold mists into little storms. Willow Summer-cloud crawled behind the iron water column and huddled there, wide-eyed and pale.

The dwarves of Thorbardin had built their gates to be impenetrable. And with this as the goal, dwarven craft had done its best. The great beast’s struggles neither stopped nor slowed the irrevocable turning of the huge screw in its sockets. Inch by inch, second by second, the massive gate-plug closed into its frame, closing on the neck of the trapped beast.

Rage raved. Rage roared, reared, and thundered, flailing mighty appendages. But the gate closed tighter and tighter as geared waterwheels took the flow from high tanks and transferred their energy to the screw.

To Willow, it seemed an hour before the great, steel-sheathed stone plug pushed itself as far as it could go into its sockets and came to a stop. Hardly an inch of daylight showed around it, and in that inch was pinched the long neck of the fog-beast. Its wings still beat, its talons still scrabbled, and its tail still lashed from side to side, but now the motions slowed and became erratic. It was almost impossible to see in the gatehouse because of the dense fog, but as the beast’s flailing became feeble, it seemed to Willow that the fog became less dense.

There were shouts from somewhere, and the sounds of running feet, then armed dwarves swarmed into the narrow corridor, gaping at the sight ahead of them. The one leading was Damon Omenborn, his face a fierce scowl, his eyes dark with worry. Right behind him was Tag Salan.

Willow crawled out from behind the flow column, and . Damon saw her. Leaping over the creature’s twitching tail, the big Hylar dodged under the screw and pulled the girl to her feet. He stared at her for a moment, then dropped his hammer and shield, caught her up in strong arms, and lifted her entirely off the floor, pressing her against him.

“Damon!” she managed, almost breathless. “Damon, quit that! Put me down!”

Reluctantly, he set her back on her feet. “You’re alive,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“I told you I’d get that thing,” she reminded him. “I got it.”

“You certainly did.” He glanced again toward the almost closed gate, throttling the beast’s neck. “Do you suppose it’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what it takes to kill a . . . one of those.”

“Well, it sure isn’t going anywhere.” Tag Salan chuckled, ducking under the screw to get a better look at the fog-creature, which was still twitching. “I guess it can just stay where it is until we’re sure it’s finished. Do you think this is a dragon of some kind?”

“I don’t think so,” Damon said. “But it may be the kind of thing that dragons came from.” He turned back to Willow, still holding her arms with both hands. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She gazed up at him. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well,” he said, “there is an old legend here in Thorbardin. It’s about me. I don’t know what to make of it, but. . . well, I wonder if you would be interested, possibly, in being the mother of kings?”

Thousands of dwarves jammed the ramparts of Southgate as Cale Greeneye and the Council of Thanes met there to supervise the removal of fallen weapons from the battlefields below. The Einar, who had waited out the siege within Thorbardin, were going home now, back to their herds and their fields. But few of those leaving would ever again think of themselves as Einar. During their stay in Thorbardin, most had decided between the hammer and the axe.

Some were remaining behind, to join the thanes within the underground nation. But most were returning to the outside, and most of those, having chosen the sun over the stone, would henceforth be Neidar.

“We have learned a great lesson here,” old Olim Goldbuckle stated to those around him. “Willen was right. Thorbardin is invulnerable to siege, but without the Neidar outside, to complement the Holgar within, it cannot stand as the fortress of Kal-Thax.”

“We are becoming, more and more, two separate peoples,” Slide Tolec agreed. “The Holgar thanes have fought outside Thorbardin and yearned to withdraw within. The Neidar have dwelt within Thorbardin, and have yearned for the open skies. I wonder if we can ever truly be one again.”

“Or if we ever were,” Vog Ironface rumbled. “It may be that an age is coming to its end.”

“Ages begin and end only in the fettered minds of scrollsters,” Olim pronounced, then turned a wry grin toward Quill Runebrand. “No offense intended, Keeper of Lore. Without your peculiar reasonings, how would the rest of us ever know when yesterday ends and tomorrow begins?”

Willen shook his head, uncomfortable as always with the bantering of his peers. The old leaders seemed to become more philosophical with every passing year. Especially the jovial, flint-hearted old Daewar, Olim Goldbuckle, and the intuitive Theiwar, Slide Tolec. And yet, to Willen it often seemed that the less sense his chieftain-peers made, the more wisdom might be found in what they said. To his soldier’s mentality, it was a riddle beyond solution.

“Will you be coming back soon?” he asked Cale Greeneye.

“To visit, of course.” The Neidar nodded. “But maybe never again to live. Olim is right about the lesson we have learned. A fortress that nobody can get out of is as pointless as one that nobody can get into. The gates of Thorbardin must be able to open, as well as to close, and for that, there must be Neidar outside to protect the fortress, just as the fortress protects the lands around it.”

“We will only become more separate as the ages pass,” Willen said, then glanced around sheepishly He realized that he was beginning to sound just as vague and wise as the other chieftains.

“Different, yes,” Cale Greeneye said. “We were always different, the people of the stone and the people of the sun. But not necessarily separate. We out here need the security of your presence, just as you need ours. Besides, differences can strengthen bonds if they are good bonds to start with. We’ve seen an example of that, too.”

“We have?”

“Your son . . . my nephew, and his Einar girl. Those two have only one thing in common, but it is their differences that will make their bond succeed.”